POP REVIEW : Cave’s Feel-Good Songs of Evil, Decay

With his pasty complexion, sunken eyes and turned-up nose, Nick Cave resembles Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera, and there’s also a bit of the bratty kid in his bearing. At the Roxy on Monday, rock’s poet laureate of human corruption was appropriately menacing and oddly playful as he dug into his tales of lust, murder, venality and girl trouble with a real vengeance.

Cave is always a compelling performer, but--perhaps energized by playing this rare club date, a late booking in advance of his concert the following night at the Palace--he seemed especially animated. Whipping around the stage, mounting a stage monitor for a more commanding angle above the crowd, driven to the floor, punching the air, the Australian cult star generated the kind of tension and urgency that’s his special province.

In contrast to the Cure’s Robert Smith, a fellow explorer of the dark side, Cave avoids indulgent, confessional soul-searching in his songs, instead spinning narratives like a novelist, or a folk storyteller, or a preacher gripped by a sermon that he’s compelled to release.

After opening the show with a version of “Henry’s Dream” that sounded like a nightmare sound check, Cave’s band, the Bad Seeds, found its balance and provided a propulsive, churning storm behind the frenzied songs, melancholy soulfulness for the hymns, booming chants and cabaret dynamics and gnarled formations of blues and gospel.

Cave responded to the music’s intensity with a hound-from-hell fervor, and pulled off the great paradox: singing about evil and decay while making you feel good to be alive.